JAVIER TERRÉN, HEAD OF TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT FIBA CHINA

Basketball has always been part of Javier Terrén’s life. After playing for Breogan, CAI Zaragoza and Canarias La Laguna, among other professional teams, he moved to China, where he currently runs a basketball training company, NBG Academy.
A life that allows him to combine two of his greatest passions: sports and traveling. As a former ETUZ student, he shares with us how this new professional and personal adventure is progressing.

You are a professional athlete with an extensive career in basketball. But why did you study Tourism? What memories do you have from that time?

I was a professional athlete (I’ve been retired for 8 years now). The truth is that I saw it as something compatible with my studies. After two years of trying to study chemical engineering, I realised that in order to keep up with the pace I wanted, I needed to choose something that would be more balanced. I’ve always been good with languages and enjoy interacting with people, so I thought tourism could be the right choice.
It was a very nice time in my life that linked me to normal life, because when you are in a sports dynamic you certainly spend many hours training, travelling and resting. I met a lot of people with different interests and hobbies, that helped me a lot to keep track of my classes when I had to miss them for different reasons. I also have to be very grateful to the professors who understood my situation from day one and made things much easier for me. For example, I spoke to the team so I could skip practice some mornings and go to class, and that’s what we did.
But if a player was sick or they needed me, they would text me and I had to go to the training. I went to class every day with my workout bag, and if they needed me, I’d just leave class and head straight to the training. (The professors understood my situation perfectly and there were never any complaints).

You currently live in China. Why China? What made you decide to go there?
In 2010, I decided to come here as a personal project to learn Chinese because I was tired of the crisis and of the life in Spain. I believed that learning Chinese would be the perfect complement to my academic background.

Did you know Chinese?
No, I didn’t when I came here.

Sport and travel don’t seem like a bad combination, do they? You combine two great passions in your company!
I’m very lucky to be able to dedicate my life to basketball and travel for it, so I can’t complain.

Starting a business in China must be pretty challenging, right? What made you decide to set it up there? Do you have any partnerships?
After several years working on my projects, it was time to take the next step, and with a Chinese partner I’ve known for a few years, we decided to go for it. It’s been a tough but enriching experience working closely with a Chinese partner, though for me, it didn’t end on a positive note. China is a different country, a different culture. I like to think that, like everywhere else, there are both good and bad people. But certainly, my personal experience and that of everyone I’ve met while doing business with the Chinese has been the same. The attraction of money and the power it brings changes everything; the weight of a word or a contract doesn’t mean much to them. And at the end of the day, we are nothing more than foreigners in the eyes of the law. So, my advice is to be cautious, have everything well documented and, if possible, follow the laws outside China. However, I would like to believe that this will change with time and that the new generations, educated and with different values in certain things, will not follow the Chinese tradition in this aspect.

Are you planning to move back to Spain in the medium term?
If everything goes well, I just hope to go back for holidays.